April 18 (Bloomberg) -- Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of
Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, is making a public push to
encourage passage of the “Dream Act” immigration-reform law.

The proposed legislation would give children who were
brought up in the U.S. and whose parents are in the country
illegally a path to citizenship.

“There needed to be a broader communications campaign to
educate the general population around what we were seeing every
day, which is the human stories, the personal stories of the
kids who are affected by the immigration policy,” Powell Jobs
said in an interview for Bloomberg Radio’s “Bloomberg EDU with
Jane Williams” program.

Powell Jobs first met students who could qualify for the
Dream Act through College Track, a nonprofit group she cofounded
to help underserved high-school students get into and through
college. It wasn’t until they began to apply for college and
financial aid that some realized they didn’t have Social
Security numbers.

While some universities will offer grant aid to help pay
for college, undocumented students don’t qualify for Pell Grants
for low-income students.

“They had to go to community college at best because they
could not come close to affording it because they couldn’t
access any funding for their education,” said Powell Jobs, who
founded Emerson Collective, which supports education and
immigration reform. “No student who’s undocumented can get any
federal funding. Most cannot get any state funding.”

Powell Jobs is working with filmmaker Davis Guggenheim on
“The Dream is Now,” an online campaign to promote the passage
of immigration reform. Guggenheim is the Academy Award-winning
director of “An Inconvenient Truth” and “Waiting for
Superman.”

The interview with Powell Jobs and Guggenheim will air on
April 19 at 10 p.m. New York time; on April 20 at 5 a.m., 11 a.m.
and 8 p.m.; and on April 21 at 12 a.m. and 7 p.m. It is also
available on Bloomberg.com and on iTunes.)